"Stacked."

 

Early in spring training, 1977, your New York Yankees took a terrible hit. The promising young rookie who was all set to take over at shortstop for the defending, AL champion Yanks, suffered a horrible leg break. A favorite of manager Billy Martin, Mickey Klutts was just 22. He had been co-MVP of the International League in 1976, hitting .319 with 24 home runs and a .922 OPS.

After that break, he would never play a full season again.

Klutts' injury capped a costly off-season for the Yanks. They had lost two other top, minor-league prospects, 1B-OFs Otto Velez and Willie Upshaw to Toronto, in the AL expansion. Grant Jackson, the Yanks' leading set-up man in 1976, after going 6-0 with a 1.69 ERA for the team, was snatched from the roster by Seattle. 

The Yankees' top starter, Doyle Alexander, absconded to Texas, after the Bombers refused to pony up the outrageous sum of $450,000 over three years for Alexander (A few seasons later, the Yanks would shell out $1.5 million for Doyle's very worst two years, and exactly 1 win. But I digress.)

To cap it all off, on Opening Day, Catfish Hunter was hit in the toe by a line drive, while breezing to a shutout over the Brewers. Catfish hurt his arm trying to adjust his pitching style, and would never be the same pitcher again. Gil Patterson, another highly touted rookie, rushed into the rotation...blew out his arm and was finished. Permanently.

Jim Wynn, a free-agent pick-up intended to become the DH, belted a tape-measure home run in that same Opening Day contest...then hit .143 in 30 games, and was released.

Pretty awful, right? I guess the Yankees were done for 1977.

Instead, despite all these injuries and, shall we say, some clubhouse rancor, they won 100 games, took the pennant again, and smoked the Dodgers in the World Series.

The very next year, the injury bug struck again! 

In 1978, the shortstop who had taken over for Klutts, a guy named Bucky Dent, missed 39 games with his own injuries. Willie Randolph, the team's all-star second baseman, missed 28 games and the playoffs. Centerfielder Mickey Rivers missed 21 games, and saw his batting average drop from .326 to .265. 

Thurman Munson played 154 games with a bad shoulder, but his home runs dropped from 18 to 6, his OPS from .813 to .705. Cliff Johnson, the back-up catcher and DH, went from 12 homers, .296, 1.010, to 6 homers, .184, .658. 

Mike Torrez, the World Series pitching star in 1977, had taken off for Boston. Another key piece of the rotation, Don Gullett, tore up his arm on July 9th, and never pitched again. Ever. New acquisitions Andy Messersmith and Rawley Eastwick faltered, and were quickly discarded. 

And there was, still, some lingering, um, ill-will in the clubhouse.

Well, that's that, right? What team could come back from that?

As we all know, the 1978 Yankees won 100 games again (in an incredibly tough division), took the pennant again, smoked the Dodgers again in the World Series. 

How could this possibly be? 

Well, the Yankees then had a general manager named Gabe Paul, a.k.a., the Man in the Checkered Sports Coat. If he wasn't a fashion maven, he was very good at keeping the Yankees' farm system and roster so crowded with talent that the team could take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

Modern baseball is full of devastating injuries, even to young players in good shape. In fact, that's how the game always was. 

The legendary, 1939 Yankees had a starting infield that—no doubt keeping an eye on the Great Depression still raging outside the Stadium walls—missed a total of 8 games all year. But that excluded Lou Gehrig, The Iron Horse himself, the most durable player in sports history to that point, who went down with a wasting disease nobody had ever heard of.

It's always something, as The Bard wrote. Even for the Greatest Team Ever, imho, the 1998 Yankees. 

After a tough loss in the 1997 playoffs, the Yanks lost both guys playing third base—including Hall-of-Famer to be, Wade Boggs—and three of their four second basemen. Power-hitting DH Cecil Fielder left the team, as did starter Dwight Gooden, while big Japanese acquisition Hideki Irabu was already disappointing. A revivified Daryl Strawberry went down with a nearly fatal cancer, and hit none of his 24 home runs after August. (And a shout-out to Daryl today, after his heart attack. Get better, big guy.)

The Yankees barely blinked an eye. One-hundred-twenty-five wins and a World Series sweep later, they were the best team what ever was. Still are.

Why?

A certain individual I like to call, Stick Michael, made sure that that team could withstand anything, and still prosper. 

This spring, even before the Yanks' two best players went down, a couple different friends told me how "stacked" the Yankees were this year. I wanted to ask them what they were buying at our ubiquitous new buzzshops. 

Halle Berry is stacked (All right, I know: a long way to go for that reference. Still, it's Hall Berry, am I right?).

The 2024 New York Yankees were never stacked, even before Judge and Cole went to the MRI. They were short on depth, short on bullpen, short on starters. Now they are even shorter, and I will be stunned if they continue their 31-year, winning-season streak.

Why? 

Because their current GM-for-Life, Brian "What, me worry?" Cashman is incapable of stacking so much as a couple of dinner plates, and his boss, Nepo Baby Hal, doesn't care. And the question remains: If he doesn't, why should we?